"Hopewell Culture & Design reckons it owns the act of double-clicking, and is suing Apple, Nokia, Samsung and just about everyone else for breaching its patent. It's not double-clicking per se that US patent 7,171,625 covers, just the act of clicking twice on an already-selected component to action a request for additional information or greater interactivity."

Seriously though, how can they expect this to be held up in court? Yes, I know we are talking about the US in which 'patents' like these are actually granted but still...

I assume one point of a possible discussion could be the following, as mentioned in the article: "It's not double-clicking per se that US patent 7,171,625 covers, just the act of clicking twice on an already-selected component to action a request for additional information or greater interactivity." Already-selected. In order to avoid "patent problems", a party could respond that the act of double-clicking does happen on an object that is not selected.

In many GUI settings, the first click of the double-click action does the selection part. A previous click is not needed ("triple-click"). Before the double-click action takes place, the respective element is not selected.

A different approach can be seen in other GUI settings. Here, moving the mouse pointer toward an interactive element already selects that element (like the "modern" concept of selection following the mouse pointer in menus or icon bars, where it is not needed to hold down a mouse button).

And yet even though selecting first isn't *required* it is still permitted. In most desktop UIs I can click an icon, then double-click it.

The innovation here really seems to be "Double-clicking a selected element in a web browser." Because, you know, it's clearly not obvious that things which can be done could also be done in a web browser or on the internet[/i]. To one skilled in the art these concepts would be revolutionary!

I am just trying to imagine the workflow of the guy who approved this patent.

He double-clicked on the 'patents' folder on his desktop, he then double-clicked on '7171625.doc', he read the application and he then proceeded to shit his pants from the awesomeness of this previously unheard technological innovation.